Green Schoolyards Plan

One year and two months after the original deadline, Los Angeles Unified School District officials have official plan To modernize more than 600 schools and create more green spaces and shade on campus.

The 188-page Green Schoolyards for All plan details what is needed to achieve this goal by 2035, and concludes that the cost could be $3 billion or more.

“Certainly the delay was disappointing because I think there is a lot of momentum around this issue,” said school board member Kelly Gonez, who originally drafted a resolution in 2022 to try to get the green schoolyard plan off the ground. “We cannot afford to waste any time because there is a lot to do and so much is needed.”

Definition of a schoolyard

The plan includes new definitions for schoolyards and green/natural spaces. This helps to determine which parts of a school site should be enhanced and what resources can be used to do so. For example, a green space is defined as “outdoor areas within a schoolyard that have recreational and/or ecological value” and can serve the following purposes:

• Create places for relaxation and play
• Provide opportunities for interactive and educational observation of natural systems
• Protect areas with typical and unique plant and animal communities
• Create areas of natural interest and beauty on school grounds for students and staff

Materials that can be used to create these areas include: plants/trees, grass/turf/natural turf/other turf materials, soil/mulch, weathered granite, permeable pavers. However, artificial turf and cool coatings are not considered “green elements,” according to the document.

In previous school district surveys and conversations with parents about the best approach to greening schools, there have been some concerns about over-reliance on technologies such as cool pavementA majority of respondents expressed a desire for “natural” materials such as trees and plants.

Parent advocates like Aleigh Lewis, co-founder of Angelenos for Green Schools, argue that natural spaces should be given priority.

While she understands that pavers are needed for sports and other recreational activities, she believes that trees, grass and other natural surfaces should be given priority over repaving areas with a reflective coating.

“You have all this money and you could do so much more for each school and reassure them,” Lewis said.

The Green Schoolyard Index

One of the new components of the plan is a updated list (starting on page 72 in the PDF file) of 205 primary school campuses. They are sorted by the most polluted areas in vulnerable communities that experience high temperatures on campus and need green spaces.

District leaders have divided 634 schools in need of green space into three categories – Category 1 includes the 205 primary schools whose schoolyards have less than 10% green/natural space. Category 2 includes primary schools with 11% or more green/natural space and all secondary schools. Category 3 also includes secondary schools. The priority list for categories 2 and 3 is not included in the index.

The challenge

In order to complete all projects by 2035, district leaders say, about “60 medium to large projects” would have to be started each year over the next eight years. Each year, $350 to $400 million would have to be made available for this purpose.

But in the plan, district officials say that completing the listed number of major projects in that time period may not be possible due to a lack of money, labor and resources. Experts, parents and community members argue that the district can do more with less money.

The district currently uses a variety of avenues to finance greening projects on campus, including lease financing agreements, bond repurposing, state financing and partnership grants.

Gonez said the district has already invested $100 million in greening since the resolution was passed because it has been creative enough to make its campuses at least 30 percent green. But there is still a long way to go.

“We have a big challenge ahead of us, how do we get to that $3 billion total over the next 11 years,” Gonez said. “I want us to dig deeper into that gap, what we can do now and how do we get to that overall goal so we can work with our external partners and advocate with state and federal agencies to get the funding we need for green space.”

Why it is important

Most LAUSD school campuses are covered with asphalt, which absorbs heat. Temperatures on asphalt school playgrounds can reach up to 142 degrees on the surface. Schools across LA are feeling the effects of the increasing heat.

Experts say hot weather could expand further in the first months of the school year, which leads to rising temperatures. V. Kelly TurnerAssociate Professor of Urban Planning and Geography at UCLA and Deputy Director of the Luskin Center for Innovationsaid that this would continue to be the case in the future.

Turner and her colleagues have studied extreme heat and the role design plays in how people experience it. They found that “schools are some of the hottest places in communities because of the way they are built.”

The background

In June 2022, the district managers $58 million allocated on outdoor education initiatives, including greening campus grounds. A few months later, Gonez, then-CEO, asked Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and his team to develop a plan to ensure that campus grounds are at least 30% green by 2035.

District officials say they have partnered with local nonprofits such as Tree People and Trust For Public Land to help plant trees and create more shade on school grounds with the help of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection grant. There are eight LAUSD nonprofit partnerships that receive Cal Fire grants in the 2022-23 grant period. There are additional grants and other funding requests that are in process.

Meanwhile, the meeting of the Greening Schools and Climate Resilience Committee, originally scheduled for May 15, has been postponed to June 5.